


Traveler

by edfh26



Series: all roads lead to somewhere [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate name for this was going to be Other Side of Nowhere but I had a theme going, BAMF James Potter, Because I can, F/M, Gen, I curse like a sailor and it fucking translates to my writing, Sort Of, Why?, beyond the Veil, fancy knives, gratuitous fuckery with the accepted rules of canon magic, i call it like i see it, i mean canon is basically lowkey wolfstar, if you are here because you read Brother and want more then I am very sorry, is someone getting stabbed in the throat graphic violence, is that a thing?, lEtS fUCk up tHe dEaTH EaTeRS, lowkey wolfstar, sure, the afterlife is not always a happy place, three shot, unbetaed, we die like men, what does it say about me that i need to ask
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 00:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12947265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edfh26/pseuds/edfh26
Summary: There are unspoken social rules in death, just as in life. James breaks them.





	Traveler

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I wrote Brother (part one of this series) a while ago and intended to leave it as it was and be done with it. However, the idea recently reappeared in my brain but in context to the Marauders. That translated into an attempt to write a prequel to Brother that became this AU monstronsity. That's right, I wrote a Veil fic, because I apparently have no self-control. I'm frankly a little disgusted with myself, but also I kind of love it. It has all of the best HP tropes: angst, magical knives, and trans-dimentional devices. No, not your speed? I don't really care. I think teen is an appropriate rating for this, but I'm one of those people that can read gratuitous violence and general stabbery (not a word but it should be) and not even flinch but cringes really hard at fluff, so please let me know.
> 
> Shit, there was a point to this, one that I didn't even get close to reaching. Anyway, this IS NOT in the same universe as Brother, those of you who clicked the next button with that in mind. I put it in a series because the underlying concept is the same, but it is really more like an AU of that AU. 
> 
> Yeah, sure, why not.

Death is selfish, James finds.

* * *

 James lands in the middle of a decrepit city street. The buildings are stained gray with industrial smog, nearly indiscriminate from the sky above him; the air is heavy and cold and smells of smoke. James imagines that a place like this should be filled with working people attired in uniforms and dust, but the streets seem to be empty of people besides himself.

“You’re dead,” someone says from behind him. James nods, not turning. A man sighs and steps to stand beside him. He is middle aged with greying brown hair and kind, familiar eyes that look up to the featureless sky. “You could be a ghost,” he remarks. “You could move on.”

“I have to wait,” James says, voice hoarse. “I have— I have to know.”

“I can respect that.”

“Thank you.”

There is a beat of silence.

“We never got to meet, son,” Mr. Evans says to the sky.

“No,” James says. “We didn’t.”

* * *

 James’ afterlife is dirty and gritty and above all, _lonely_. People fade in and out in his periphery but never who he wants, who he needs, and James doesn’t know whether to be happy about that or not. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve this.

James doesn’t believe in heaven or hell but he does believe in balance.

He thinks courage is different for everyone, but for James it has always meant a willingness to experiment. There had been countless injuries in his youth from pointless things like jumping off brooms and breaking glass vials in his father’s laboratory. Lessons were dull, and James would skip out on them whenever he could to explore the grounds. His tutor, an elderly muggleborn man, had gotten so exasperated with him that one day he had taken James to a muggle bookstore in London and set him loose in the textbooks; James had chosen a large one about Physics and read it under his covers with painstaking attention to detail and a little ball of conjured light.

James learned a lot about the world around him from that book; most importantly, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Magic is only the ability to control what that reaction will be, but magic cannot prevent the reaction from happening in the first place. If James came across a building on fire, he could make that fire any color he wanted, he could put it out or make it cold or make it sing show-tunes, but he couldn’t stop the fire from ever having burned in the first place.

Maybe this is somehow the same.

* * *

The summer he was seventeen, James' parents had died within a week of one another.

Sirius had been a burning ball of emotion, wrecking things and sobbing and hurling curses while James watched helplessly. James himself didn’t cry until September first, when he and Sirius went to the platform and there was no one to wave goodbye to. Somehow Sirius had gotten him into a compartment, but James doesn’t remember anything until Lily had burst in, furious and looking ready to drag him by the ear into the bloody Prefects’ compartment, only to stop dead in the door way.

He loves her more than he loves anything, has since he saw her on the platform first year. Everything James feels towards or about her is amplified, all-consuming.

“She’s gone,” James’ father says, voice and face full of open pity. He looks out of place in this barren grey world; everything about him screams money, even after his death. He and James don’t look much alike; Fleamont is neat and smooth where James is sharp and chaotic.

James doesn’t need his pity. He’s known, for weeks or years or however time works in this place, that Lily was dead, but also that she hasn’t moved on. He only wants to know where she is, if she's okay.

James has found that he can manipulate this world to some extent. He’s sitting at a table that only exists because he wants it to, wearing a long leather coat that only exists because it’s fucking cold and fucking wet here.

“You have to move on, James,” Fleamont says, pleading. “Sirius, he’s—“

“And what can I do about it from either here or there?” James shouts, slamming his hands on the table. It disappears, and Fleamont flinches. James leans back, running his hands through his hair. “Not a damn thing, that’s what," he sighs.

And that’s the problem with whatever kind of halfway house James is currently calling home. He can’t know, not like the ones who have moved on can, but he can feel, and he feels _intensely_. He isn’t yet all the way removed from the land of the living, so he knows that Lily is dead and that Sirius is good as, that Remus is contemplating terrible things and Peter is safely holed up who knows where. He knows, without so much as a clue and with the visceral certainty of a parent, that his child doesn’t know he is loved.

James could leave. The temptation is there, burning in the pit of his stomach. All he would have to do is take his father’s hand and there would be no pain, only distance. Same, warm distance.

There is courage in pain; there is valor in taking the hard way. This has never been James’ brand of bravery, but it was—is—Lily’s, so James will stay, and he will wait.

* * *

 “We call it the midpoint.”

“The midpoint?”

“Everyone has their own. You can go forward or you can go back, but you can’t stay.”

“But I have.”

“Yes.”

“What will happen to me, Mum?”

“I don’t know, love.”

She is the last to come to this place for him.

* * *

James is ripped from his body, or whatever version of a body he has here, in the space between one moment and the next, thrown into a graveyard. Lily stands—floats—just in front of him. He reaches out to her, wants call to her, scream her name, but she makes a gesture for silence behind her back. He stays silent but his fingers still reach for hers, pass through hers like there is nothing there. James realizes that he is transparent, that there are others who are also transparent, an old man and a middle-aged woman and a teen, dressed nearly the same as—

His son, terrified but alive and fighting an evil that James is intimately acquainted with. James looks to the clear sky for the first time in years and thinks _why must even death be difficult_.

They make it so Harry can break the connection and takes off in the direction of the cup. James gets a fleeting look at Lily before he forces himself at Voldemort and then falls back into the midpoint.

James falls to his knees screams, in frustration and anger and just a touch of insanity. He understands now why no one stays in the midpoint.

* * *

 

The brief… whatever that was… to the land of the living ignites a flare of emotion in his chest that burns in its intensity. James doesn’t know what is worse, the numbing grief and determination of before or _this_ , painful longing and endless frustration

He keeps his head down and searches, moving endlessly through the grungy city streets looking for something, _anything_ , that is out of place here, that feels different, that feels at all.

He finds it, eventually. Just in time, some might say.

* * *

James doesn’t notice an incline of the ground until he’s near the top and turns around. His boots crunch on gravel, and around him swirl ribbons of color like clouds, so fast he nearly can’t distinguish between them. The wind blows harshly in his hair; his coat flaps around him as he turns to face the summit.

There is an arch, with a transparent veil shimmering beneath it. Someone screams on the other side. James fights an impulse to run towards the sound of distress, instead approaching slowly, trying to make a wand form in his hand and once again failing.

“Give me something!” James shouts at the sky above him, still dull grey despite the dizzying color surrounding him, like the eye of the storm. The midpoint must be feeling kind, as a dagger engraved with runes appears in his hand. “A bloody kitchen knife?” James shouts, not feeling kind at all. The storm picks up in intensity in response. He turns his attention to the veil.

Engraved across the top are the words _semel transierit viator_ _._ On the other side is a fight.

James steps through.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, kudos are much appreciated. Let me know how this went in the comments, yeah? I edit my own stuff.
> 
> Ten points to the House of whoever knows what the Latin means, otherwise known as ten points to the House of anyone who has google translate like me.


End file.
